


our mouths are wounds

by oriflamme



Series: robots. robots everywhere [21]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Arcee Leaning Over People Against Walls Like A Stereotypical Anime Pose, Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, F/M, Gotta Break In The Cycee Tag With My Own Content - Absolutely Barbaric, Rough Kissing, almost wall sex, wireplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-15
Updated: 2018-09-15
Packaged: 2019-07-12 18:23:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16000787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oriflamme/pseuds/oriflamme
Summary: Arcee tilts her head, her mouth twitching into something too vicious to be a smile. Then she reaches up, curls her fingers into the gap of his cheek, and drags him in close.





	our mouths are wounds

**Author's Note:**

> NSFW follow up to [that one Arcee fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15919680). Technically, this scene fits between Arcee showing up in Crystal City and the ending, but I couldn't get up the motivation to write it at the time. :P

She loiters.

Nova Prime has big plans for Cybertron, and Arcee is interested in precisely none of them. She's only here because Galvatron is. But it's been millions of years since they understood each other as she always thought a twin should. The first time Arcee made a choice that didn't align with Galvatron's, their relationship broke into a shattered pile of glass, and they cut themselves on every possible edge on the way down. Now he treats her stiffly, with an unspoken expanse between them. She knows nothing about his life and his politics except for what she observes from a distance; in their short, stilted conversations, they rarely get past the point of passing messages. Exchanging data. Neither of them has ever been much for niceties and the filler of socialization. Now, they don't even truly speak.

They wouldn't need to speak outright, if she could've fallen into her old place in the shadows by his side. She'd be able to experience his life for herself. But the bitterness drove her out from there a lifetime ago; even if she could fit back into that space, Galvatron still harbors that faded edge of resentment from when they both realized that Arcee was the better fighter. He has matured - but he hasn't forgotten.

And someone's stolen her place.

Cyclonus of Tetrahex. She's done cursory inquiries, the same way she used to skim the backgrounds of the Thirteen to understand their motivations - accessing archives clandestinely where she can, threatening people in dark alleys when she can't. She doesn't have the patience for much more. Tetrahex was never a Titan city, so its archives didn't get spontaneously launched off planet during the exodus of the civil war.

Said archives tend to be alive. Tricky, but easier to menace than the non-sentient data storage systems Nova's scientists have developed to handle the greater load of a centralized government, and they're scrupulous to the point of inanity. Cyclonus didn't come from one of the known, consecrated hot spots of Tetrahex; he's on record as a chance ignition, a spark that emerged in isolation in the outlying regions of Tetrahexan territory. He wandered into the city after forging himself, where Tetrahexan adherence to tradition granted him citizenship. Arcee suspects that there's something in the metal around there - Tetrahexans are notorious for both their spiritualism and their grim dignity, and true to form Cyclonus fell in with a few different warrior cults over the millennia before devoting himself to the Clavis Aurea, one of the most austere, ascetic, overly literal faiths in an already austere city.

It takes a few interrogation attempts before Arcee realizes that it is _significant_ that Cyclonus transitioned from primarily martial orders to something as neutral as the Clavis Aurea. Things like that matter to spiritual mecha, apparently. The battle-temple of Ferīre noted the abrupt departure of a dedicated, dutiful warrior with some consternation.

Arcee's lip curls in derision the one time she slips through a battle-temple. It perfectly encapsulates everything about Cyclonus that annoys her. Clean, polished mecha who practice ritual pattern dances until they've mastered every form, in a temple so old they might have built the city around it.

It's a mockery of what battle really is. A diversion for those who don't have to waste time fighting to eke out a living in the muck of the Darklands, like the rest of them. No sharp reek of spilled energon, no desperate, ozone-like haze of EM fields burning in the air. No one dies in their exhibition fights. Arcee doesn't know which came first, the temple rites or the gladiator pits, but it's disgustingly pathetic. The fact that Cyclonus wound up skilled enough a warrior to serve as Galvatron's bodyguard through the height of the Primal civil war just irritates her all the more.

That, and the fact that she and Galvatron have always had similar taste. Arcee's never been adept enough at social cues to care much, but she's aware of that much. She took many things from Galvatron, from his tutoring on body language to the exact, measured degree of difference between a genuine and a bloodthirsty smile, and in this there was more than enough overlap between them. Cyclonus is, irritatingly enough, beautiful in the stark, classical way, and despite his formal combat training he can still fight like a rabid turbofox. He's remarkably durable. He meets her cool, contemptuous smiles with sharp, tight frowns whenever they're in proximity. When she and Galvatron have their brief, cutting conversations, Cyclonus shifts into position as though Arcee is an active threat. The little upstart.

They grate on each other in all the worst ways. It makes her _itch_.

(He doesn't remind her at all of Solus. Which is probably the point.)

It's petty, really. She shoulder-checks him in the hallway, smooth as glass. When Galvatron isn't busy with his life and disinterested with _dealing_ with Arcee, like she's nothing more than an irritating reminder of his past, they always seem to wind up bitter and snappish with each other. His stern, stiff-necked bodyguard is just a convenient target.

Cyclonus snarls and whirls on her with a snap. Narrowing her eyes, Arcee seizes him by the collar of his armor and slams him against the wall. Her irritation is a tense coil in her torso, but she drops him with a snort after she's proven her point, her helm carefully angled to keep out of goring range of his horns. She doesn't have hers anymore; they didn't suit her restlessness.

He doesn't move away from the wall. His teeth are gritted, his hollow cheeks taut, and he dares to make direct eye contact with her.

That's a challenge. Arcee dislikes eye contact for her own reasons, but it's a hostile signal in most of the Darklands, too. From someone like Cyclonus - when she and he are so annoyingly alike - it's a deliberate thing.

But then he slips - his optics flickering up and down her, involuntarily - and Arcee catches on.

Ah. Not irritation. _Frustration._

Interesting.

Arcee tilts her head, her mouth twitching into something too vicious to be a smile. Then she reaches up, curls her fingers into the gap of his cheek, and drags him in close. It's like kissing a stiff, deeply affronted wall for all of two seconds - then Cyclonus attempts to surge forward, both hands catching her face so tightly that the tips of his claws prick against the metal as he deepens it. 

If he's making a bid to shove her over backwards, he overestimates himself. Arcee plants her feet and pins him against the wall with a sharp, precise shift of her knee. Cyclonus's back hits the wall again with a hard _clang._ The claws dig in a little harder, but he can't even relax his jaw enough to use his teeth properly. He keeps staring at her, optics burning as he tries to find a leverage point in her stance.

The temptation to _wreck_ him appeals. They both, she thinks, want something out of the other that has nothing to do with attraction. Each of them jealous for their own reasons, trying to dig scraps of Galvatron out of each other's seams. He'd look very nice crumpled against the wall, stripped open and steaming and desperate. Arcee angles her head back and pries his mouth open as she considers it; his narrowed eyes glare down at her, frustration still leaking through the grim mask, but the seams between his legs burn against her knee. With the right pressure applied at the hinge of his gaping cheeks, he can't bite down on her fingers. "Open," she orders, mockingly, and feels the hinge tighten in impotent fury.

She wonders how Galvatron's taken advantage of that. Cyclonus's self-control is annoyingly impenetrable most of the time - now, he's already running hot. A minor tremor runs through one of his hands before he clamps down on it and grasps her waist with a drag of claws. Irritatingly well trained. She runs her free hand under the edge of his jaw, tilting his head up and back to expose the cables of his throat.

The balance tips in her mind. Wreckage is more appealing than satisfaction. Arcee presses her fingers deeper into his mouth until it tightens, Cyclonus's ventilations wheezing and increasingly uneven. She drops her other hand absently until she finds a seam flared wide enough to accommodate her fingers.

Then she rakes her fingers down, sharp tips dragging along the smooth bundle of wires, and Cyclonus jerks like she just stabbed him. A throttled noise escapes his vocalizer as he chokes back a keen, swallowing around her. He doesn't crack his helm against the wall, but it's a close call. Charge sparks under Arcee's fingers as she curls them deeper. He tries to haul her in closer - pushing for the advantage again, like the fool that he is - and Arcee permits him to shift her a fraction closer so he grinds on her leg once more. Not a centimeter further. The effort of repressing his responses in some ways already has his optics on the verge of crackling.

Arcee snorts, and finds another open seam. His internal temperature spikes again as she runs a thumb down the wires, electrical charge building under her thumb.

Something snaps open between his legs, burning.

Done.

Arcee pulls her hands back and steps clear. Cyclonus drops onto one knee despite the tremors, a practiced move.

Which is about when he realizes that Arcee's control is absolute. A little warm, but nothing she can't dismiss. Interface has never overwhelmed her like Galvatron advised that it might.

No. Cyclonus is on his knees, frozen, panel open and lips still parted as he waits for something that won't come.

"Remember who you're dealing with," Arcee chides. Then she turns on her heel and walks away.

The next time he snaps at her in irritation, maybe she'll finish what she started. His frustration is _his_ problem, now.


End file.
